Encoded telephone conversations are not new. The earliest encryption scheme to get public notice was authored in part by movie actress Hedy Lamarr, who worked with engineers in her husband's company to encrypt analog telephone calls, then donated the method to the US government. Her method must still be cited as prior art in many patent applications. Telephone encryption today is digital, and stronger, and used by many people in and out of the government.
There is every reason to believe the midshipmen at the Naval Academy will have a satellite of quality equal or superior to any commercial satellite. I helped build some of the earliest satellite and missile equipment, starting about 1960. The government used a specification and testing program designed to be so tight that the commercial company could not build anything badly. Testing was very rigid and manufacturing and rework very tightly monitored, to assure that no manufacturer could build an inferior product. Everyone thought they could beat the profit motive and get a superior product. The price of this fanatical quality control was very high, and the most notable failure was the blowup of the shuttle with Christa McAuliffe aboard. The profit motive had won out over quality once more, and the government was shown again that more money is not a cure for corporate greed.
The midshipmen at the USNA are in it for pride, not profit. They are making a hand-built, thoroughly tested satellite as a learning project. They have adequate funds, brains, and pride. They are not threatened with stockholder suits if the project fails to make lots of money, only ridicule from the other services if they fail. That prospect of ridicule guarantees an all-out effort to deliver as promised. No one likes to fail when the reputation of a service is on the line, particularly the service expected to pay and promote project members.
I differ only a little with Sangui5 on his submission. The algorithm used with DES was a subset of the Lucifer Algorithm. The Lucifer Algorithm was described by my college professor, who had a copy, as,"A monster". The use of a subset kept the result to a practical size. The DES was to be implemented in hardware, and the government provided a set of three hexadecimal numbers to test any implementation. I have this information from 1979, when life was simpler and 56-bit keys were strong stuff. An engineer published an article showing how to implement the DES in a 1979 microcomputer with a 1024 byte memory. He wrote a how-to article, and explained that even though his implementation worked, it was software and not hardware. Therefore, the government would never bless it. Remember, he implemented DES. He made no attempt to crack it.
Your insistence that I obtain an MSN account puzzles me. First, the only windows I use is a variant of X Windows called XFree86. I tried a Microsoft version of windows, but it was so unstable it would not even run Microsoft software without crashing. The first time I tried to upgrade, the price of the upgrade was three times as much as a stand-alone operating system called Linux, sold by several vendors, each proclaiming advantages over the others.
I bought the Microsoft upgrade, and installed it. After a few attempts, the upgrade OS asked me to put in the disk for the old OS from which I was upgrading. Then it asked for obscure numbers from arcane locations. Then it wanted to be registered on the Internet before the Internet connection was even activated. After going through all of this, and rebooting the computer several times, I finally got a tutorial. When the tutorial was finished, I tried to run one of my old programs. It would not run on the upgrade, and the data would not transfer because the program version that came with the upgrade had a data format incompatible with my existing software. Both versions came from Microsoft. I tried some other programs. A few ran, a few brought the "Blue Screen of Death", and a few from Microsoft and others crashed because they tried to perform an illegal operation.
After this disgusting demonstration of an operating system unable to handle even the simplest errors, I went back to the vendor and bought a version of Linux featuring many utilities from the Gnu project. It took some time to learn, but the manuals and on-line help files were clear, and source code was available to check out the tough questions. Crashes are history, as is anything with the Microsoft name. Kindly address any communications telling me to use Microsoft products to the Dead Letter Office of the United States Postal Service.
You are correct that the State of Texas does not like people who shoot law enforcement officers. They also do not care for people who claim law enforcement authority and do not have it. I remember a West Texas policeman, who declared himself the town boss, being shot on the courthouse steps at noon Saturday in a farm town. The investigating Texas Rangers, best police in the state, could not find a single witness. They provided police services until a replacement was hired. I also remember El Paso policemen losing cases and prisoners for illegal search and seizure. These same policemen gunned down several holdup men foolish enough to fight them. Nothing is as simple as it appears, and a snap decision, made without sound advice, could ruin your whole life. When in doubt, get a lawyer.
Intrusive ads are indeed affective. They force me to remember the suppliers I will never consider when making purchases. I can filter out most ads on the fly. Those that I can't filter must suffer the consequences. As for the psychobabble of reporters on the subject, I like the comment of a movie karate warrior,"If I want your opinion I'll beat it out of you."
First the benevolent Australian government forcibly disarms the citizens, then it outlaws privacy. Adolf Hitler would have been proud. When do they offer bounties for turning in enemies of the state? Sieg Heil!
Re:Right-to-work protects workers. Period.
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Dial U for Union
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· Score: 1
A union shop requires you to join a union after a probationary period, and is legal. This was a right fought for, voted on, and won by the employees that negotiated the original union contract. Be assured that the employer fought it as hard as possible. A closed shop requires you to be a union member to apply for a job. It was quite common in construction unions, but has been outlawed.
No person is ever forced to join a union. They can always leave. As a shop steward, I had one man try to avoid required union membership. We wished him well as he was leaving. The other hundred or so new employees read the contract and had no problem with membership.
Defore you dis a union, read their contract. You might be amazed at the amount of stuff they guarantee you. There are a few large corporations that have treated engineers and other professionals so poorly thet the professionals called in the blue-collar union and organized.
The Taft Hartley Law and various state RTW laws were designed to deprive unions of income by giving workers the right to choose. The laws failed because employers big and small abused the privilege badly, attempting to pit old versus new, white versus black, men versus women, and any other difference they could exploit to divide and conquer. The surviving employees wised up in a hurry, and organized. Some companies have defeated unions by giving nearly the same benefits without a contract. They are very much aware that any attempt to backtrack will bring in organizers. For you, personally, I suggest you find such a company. You will soon find out how much you are really worth. They usually have probationary periods much longer than the thirty days mandated by Taft-Hartley. My uncle, a small employer, said he could tell in half a day if a new man would be a good worker.
"Right to Work " laws are just a device to give management more leverage against unions. Management has responded by abusing these rights in every state with RTW laws. States without them (California is one) still do not have closed shops, where you must join the union before getting a job. They might have union shops, where new employees must join the union after thirty days' probation. The union has no voice in any employee/employer matter during probation, as spelled out in the Taft-Hartley Law. After probation, the employee has full union rights and privileges, with otherwise equal cases being decided by seniority. It does not take much time in industry to realize that an employee is nothing more than a number, and managers will base all choices on personal preference, given the chance. The manager that does not abuse this privilege is a wonderful person, and should be valued. Employees will find that even in RTW states that forbid union shops, that the promotions and preferences will go to union members. This is because the foremen and managers worked their way up through union ranks, and have little sympathy for clueless freeloaders that want all the benefits and none of the costs or responsibilities. If you as an individual feel that you are too valuable to require union backing, I suggest you form your own company. If you really are that good, the company will prosper even in bad times and you will get rich. As for me, I have worked union and non-union jobs for over forty years. The union jobs were always more secure and more fairly administered. In good companies, the difference was very small, but it always existed.
Scientists discovered a cockroach in the USA that lived on the wire insulation in TV sets. Fortunately, this breed is not very widespread. Unfortunately, if you find a new material, then nature will come up with something that eats and enjoys it.
This thread has good and bad things to say about Mr. Elz, with most of the bad from people who do not want to do it Mr. Elz's way. I see no sympathy for the Australian government, which is friend to nobody but themselves in my not so humble opinion.
I deal with the computer fans every month at user group meetings. They spare no expense on hardware, then search the WWW for free software and music. I prefer their company to that of any of the local immorals. Music people that insist on tubes are my favorite target. They do get less distortion, but only by increasing thermal noise. Do not waste your breath arguing either side of this discussion. My own hearing has a frequency response sloped like Bob Hope's nose. Radio Shack hifi is overkill for me. I do enjoy computing and computer users.
Texas Instruments, one of the companies I retired from, clearly stated their policies on using company computers and telephones even before I started with them in 1974. The computers and telephones were company property, and meant for company business. Anything and everything could and would be monitored. Misuse and abuse would not be tolerated. Having said this, the company was then quite lenient in all but the worst cases. The worst cases involved sexual harrassment, viewing porn (clearly prohibited in several announcements), attempting to misuse or steal trade secrets, or attempting to misappropriate money. The first sin by telephone or computer usually brought a polite request to obey the rules. A second notice was a step toward dismissal. Pay telephones were always available for personal calls, and employees could bring in their personal computers if they wanted, although connecting to the company network put them under company rules. TI did find employees using telephones for personal business, making excessive family calls, some by long distance, and using the company computer for personal gain and sexual pleasure. The only people not given a second chance were some pranksters that let a fake news item go company wide, instead of only to the intended victim. The fake item abused stock exchange regulations, and embarrassed TI. Company policy was clearly stated when an employee was hired, and several reminders and clarifications were published by the company. The company owned the computers and the telephones, and every bit of data on the computers. If this bothered you, you could always leave.
I had a painful wrist from using a mouse. It went away when I changed hands. This was a sore wrist, not carpal tunnel syndrome. I met a young lady in Colorado with the real thing. It was very unpleasant, required special braces, and did not abate while I knew her. Computer users should emulate one characteristic of club runners. They should listen to their bodies and treat pain immediately. If something hurts, the person is doing it incorrectly or excessively, possibly both. Back off, rest, and investigate more comfortable ways to do the same thing.
The strengths were in the characters. William Hartnell, the first Dr. Who, set the protocol ("Don't call me Doc!"). Colin Baker was Tom Baker's enemy before becoming the doctor.
Casting a female as Dr. Who is a silly idea. There were female time lords at the trials of Dr. Who, and Romana, ably played by Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward, travelled with Dr. Who, who gave his name on one show as "John Smith".
The companions included many capable actors and actresses, but I enjoyed two of the cameos most. Jaqueline Pearce was on briefly in a Patrick Troughton episode, and Lionel Pertwee's companion, Jean Marsh, enjoyed herself hugely as a Valkyrie queen with Sylvester McCoy.
The show is British, with a British view, and would be a disaster if it was made in the USA.
Re:Broadcast TV generally isn't worth it anyways
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Digital TV Approaches
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· Score: 1
My experience and solutions are similar. I have tried three times to use cable TV, and torn it out every time. The cable TV people value their premium channels so much that they protect them with filters that lower their fidelity. Some offset the channel frequencies slightly to require use of their rental tuning boxes. They push pay-per-view to the exclusion of everything else, and I won't watch pay-per-view. I never used satellite or digital cable TV because they still do not offer anything worth my time and money. If I cannot get it on free TV, and it is not worth enduring commercials, then it does not exist. The distributors have already committed suicide in this household.
I remember the mobile phones of the day, and also making telephone calls by marine radio. The calls were not scrambled, and could be monitored by anyone with a proper AM receiver. The charges, ship or automobile, were about $3.25 a minute, when $100 a week was very good wages, and $10K a year was a sign of success.
If you believe that pay phones were removed because they attract criminal types, please send me large amounts of money for future delivery of genuine imitation snake oil. The removal of pay phones is a business decision. In addition to lower use because of cell phones, distrust of people who don't like being monitored, the disabling of received calls to prevent avoidance of pay phone charges, and other things in the comments, there is simple vandalism. An isolated pay phone is a tempting target for a broke vandal, and maintaining these phones is expensive. In many cases, the telephone company will not repair a vandalized pay phone, and they don't care a bit about local need, only their own pocketbook. Telephone company stockholders agree, and if pay phones don't make money, they are history. In the words of Bill Vanderbilt,"The public be damned."
The federal government oversteps their authority frequently. The IRS(Infernal Revenue Service?) has tried it twice with me, once asking questions that went beyond their legal rights to request information, and once trying to extort money from me because they did not think I knew the obscure rule that let me keep my money. With the IRS, admit to math errors and be done with it, but fight to the death if they are wrong about the rules.
As for the fiction of equal justice, they want to confiscate my firearms, which have never hurt anyone, but let Senator Edward Kennedy drive a car after he killed one of his office girls in one. Even the densest newbie should know that the rich get more equality than anyone else.
Protect your rights. Once you cede them, they will not be returned.
I have sent in rebate requests for computer hardware, computer software, and photographic film. The rebates received to date are zero, which means I am out the postage for the requests. The usual reason for refusing a rebate is my not enclosing the original receipt. The original receipt was enclosed, because the rebate offer clearly states that duplicates are not acceptable. The silly request to resubmit the rebate request with the original receipt deserves the one-finger salute.
Re:Unions were needed because of the work monopoly
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The Jungle
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· Score: 1
This comment, like many in the thread, reflects the optimistic views of people that ignore history and do not yet understand how to deal with hard times.
The biggest union movement in the USA started with the great depression in the 1930's. Hiring bosses would go out in the morning and offer a wage to the lined up workers. Those that thought it too low could leave. If there were still too many people, the boss lowered the wage again and again until the work force was the right size for the day. Wages of a dollar a day, and less, were pretty common. Many hiring bosses also expected a kickback if they hired you. A job could and would be yanked at any time during the day, and there was always someone available for replacement. There were no side benefits, and injuries were the worker's problem. Safe practices were expensive, and usually ignored. Sure, being an owner or boss kept you out of this, but becoming either was no picnic. This was the province of people that had the money, and they did not welcome outsiders. They preferred passing openings to family members. Child labor was common, because some families needed every available penny to survive.
The Socialist Party, in the person of their leader, Norman Mattoon Thomas, fought these practices tooth and nail. Mr. Thomas was jailed for speaking about such radical things as a limited work week, retirement insurance for workers, no child labor, and health insurance. This extremely dangerous radical lived long enough to see every plank in his political platform become the law of the land. As an aside, he understood the evils of Russian communism, and fought it vigorously after a short visit to look at slave labor in the Russia of Stalin in 1937.
Per Mr. Thomas, Franklin Delano Roosevelt adopted all the right ideas for all the wrong reasons. The ideas worked, the depression finally broke, and unions had some legal backing. Under Harry Truman, unions were limited by the Taft-Hartley Act. The closed shop is illegal. The union shop is legal in some states. Closed shops require union membership before hiring. Union shops require membership thirty days after hiring. Unions members who do not benefit from their union have only themselves to blame. I have been as high as Shop Steward in a local, and had one of the International representatives relocated when he did not support me during a dispute.
On to the differences between companies and unions. Companies invest money and talent, and operate to make a profit. Employees invest themselves and their skills, and wish to maintain a decent standard of living. The unions organize the employees to prevent the abuses used by employers to maximize profits. This is greatly oversimplified, but basically true. Any union worth its dues will tell employees that the company must make a profit to survive. It is in the employees interest to make this profit, but see to it that it is done within the limits of the law and will allow the individual worker to make a living wage. Both sides are guilty of excess and abuses, that is why negotiations take place. Overclassification of jobs and featherbedding are known union abuses. Divide and conquer is a favorite company tactic. One ploy used by companies is,"I would pay you more, but the union won't let me." Don't listen to this. The union sets minimum wages. Any company can pay an individual more, give bonuses, and give out-of-cycle pay raises. These would cut into profits, and are quite rare. Union benefits are minimal during boom times, and priceless when the going is tough. The one point unions feel they must stand on is seniority. Other things being equal, seniority must rule. Read that sentence. Some people only read the last three words. Companies have found that establishing that things are not equal can be a legal bag of worms, and most do not try. If you are in a union, be active, and you can prosper. If you are not in a union, be very nice to the boss.
Always glad to help out a fellow luser. The older DOS could be stopped with a three-finger salute, pressing the Ctrl-Alt-Delete buttons at the same time. Newer versions from the same company require this operation to be done twice. Microsoft can be saluted with one finger. If all else fails, pull the line cord plug from the wall. This will clear the computer for another try. Really stumped? Follow the lead of Dilbert's PHB and use an Etch-A-Sketch.
The world is not nice, friendly, or safe. You are welcome to avoid facts, but please do not ask for my assistance. I find knowledge an infinitely better shield than ignorance.
The author, Paula Stringer, has degrees from US institutions. I leave comments on whether she is actually educated to/. contributors. Remember, she is protected by various hunting laws that protect humans and other species from indiscriminate slaughter. I disagree with her basic conclusion, but maybe some of the points she raises are valid. The comment that the Linux kernel is not and cannot be held to a fixed schedule might be a sore point with her, but I agree with Linus Torvalds here. It will be released when it is ready, not when some marketoid decides the time is right.
I worked on your island, which is in the North Pacific. Your description is accurate, but incomplete. It describes life on a US military base, doing US Department of Defense contract work almost anywhere. These jobs insulate one from the vagaries of the local environment by isolating the worker from most foreign laws, customs, prices, and religious requirements. The worker must, however, comply with the desires of the local commander. Crossing the local commander will lead to instant termination and sudden liability for taxes and transportation. Stay well groomed, be polite, and do your job. Use discretion in your off-hours activities. These jobs can be financially very rewarding, and will give you an opportunity to learn the local culture. Use this opportunity. The learner might not like anything about the local culture, but it will be the result of experience, not passed on information. I did this in several countries. The culture on US military bases does not vary much. Local cultures differ everywhere. Have fun.
Working for a foreign employer is a another thing. Read other comments for guidance. It can be very good or very bad, and the employee will have to guard his own interests in a different culture, with different laws and customs. If it still looks good, go for it.
Some US employers let employees handle their own taxes overseas, others insist on adjusting pay to leave the employee with the same take home pay as a US employee at the same rate. Avoid the latter type, because their adjusment will never favor the employee. Get the IRS expatriate tax publications before leaving, and study them. Physical presence in a foreign country is easy to prove. Residence in a foreign country is not easy to prove, and, because of special privileges, almost impossible for a Department of Defense contractor to establish. Even one special privilege aborts this means of avoidance.
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Encoded telephone conversations are not new. The earliest encryption scheme to get public notice was authored in part by movie actress Hedy Lamarr, who worked with engineers in her husband's company to encrypt analog telephone calls, then donated the method to the US government. Her method must still be cited as prior art in many patent applications. Telephone encryption today is digital, and stronger, and used by many people in and out of the government.
There is every reason to believe the midshipmen at the Naval Academy will have a satellite of quality equal or superior to any commercial satellite. I helped build some of the earliest satellite and missile equipment, starting about 1960. The government used a specification and testing program designed to be so tight that the commercial company could not build anything badly. Testing was very rigid and manufacturing and rework very tightly monitored, to assure that no manufacturer could build an inferior product. Everyone thought they could beat the profit motive and get a superior product. The price of this fanatical quality control was very high, and the most notable failure was the blowup of the shuttle with Christa McAuliffe aboard. The profit motive had won out over quality once more, and the government was shown again that more money is not a cure for corporate greed.
The midshipmen at the USNA are in it for pride, not profit. They are making a hand-built, thoroughly tested satellite as a learning project. They have adequate funds, brains, and pride. They are not threatened with stockholder suits if the project fails to make lots of money, only ridicule from the other services if they fail. That prospect of ridicule guarantees an all-out effort to deliver as promised. No one likes to fail when the reputation of a service is on the line, particularly the service expected to pay and promote project members.
I differ only a little with Sangui5 on his submission. The algorithm used with DES was a subset of the Lucifer Algorithm. The Lucifer Algorithm was described by my college professor, who had a copy, as,"A monster". The use of a subset kept the result to a practical size. The DES was to be implemented in hardware, and the government provided a set of three hexadecimal numbers to test any implementation. I have this information from 1979, when life was simpler and 56-bit keys were strong stuff. An engineer published an article showing how to implement the DES in a 1979 microcomputer with a 1024 byte memory. He wrote a how-to article, and explained that even though his implementation worked, it was software and not hardware. Therefore, the government would never bless it. Remember, he implemented DES. He made no attempt to crack it.
Dear Mr. Gates:
Your insistence that I obtain an MSN account puzzles me. First, the only windows I use is a variant of X Windows called XFree86. I tried a Microsoft version of windows, but it was so unstable it would not even run Microsoft software without crashing. The first time I tried to upgrade, the price of the upgrade was three times as much as a stand-alone operating system called Linux, sold by several vendors, each proclaiming advantages over the others.
I bought the Microsoft upgrade, and installed it. After a few attempts, the upgrade OS asked me to put in the disk for the old OS from which I was upgrading. Then it asked for obscure numbers from arcane locations. Then it wanted to be registered on the Internet before the Internet connection was even activated. After going through all of this, and rebooting the computer several times, I finally got a tutorial. When the tutorial was finished, I tried to run one of my old programs. It would not run on the upgrade, and the data would not transfer because the program version that came with the upgrade had a data format incompatible with my existing software. Both versions came from Microsoft. I tried some other programs. A few ran, a few brought the "Blue Screen of Death", and a few from Microsoft and others crashed because they tried to perform an illegal operation.
After this disgusting demonstration of an operating system unable to handle even the simplest errors, I went back to the vendor and bought a version of Linux featuring many utilities from the Gnu project. It took some time to learn, but the manuals and on-line help files were clear, and source code was available to check out the tough questions. Crashes are history, as is anything with the Microsoft name. Kindly address any communications telling me to use Microsoft products to the Dead Letter Office of the United States Postal Service.
Regards,
William L. Jones, PE
You are correct that the State of Texas does not like people who shoot law enforcement officers. They also do not care for people who claim law enforcement authority and do not have it. I remember a West Texas policeman, who declared himself the town boss, being shot on the courthouse steps at noon Saturday in a farm town. The investigating Texas Rangers, best police in the state, could not find a single witness. They provided police services until a replacement was hired. I also remember El Paso policemen losing cases and prisoners for illegal search and seizure. These same policemen gunned down several holdup men foolish enough to fight them. Nothing is as simple as it appears, and a snap decision, made without sound advice, could ruin your whole life. When in doubt, get a lawyer.
Intrusive ads are indeed affective. They force me to remember the suppliers I will never consider when making purchases. I can filter out most ads on the fly. Those that I can't filter must suffer the consequences. As for the psychobabble of reporters on the subject, I like the comment of a movie karate warrior,"If I want your opinion I'll beat it out of you."
First the benevolent Australian government forcibly disarms the citizens, then it outlaws privacy. Adolf Hitler would have been proud. When do they offer bounties for turning in enemies of the state? Sieg Heil!
A union shop requires you to join a union after a probationary period, and is legal. This was a right fought for, voted on, and won by the employees that negotiated the original union contract. Be assured that the employer fought it as hard as possible. A closed shop requires you to be a union member to apply for a job. It was quite common in construction unions, but has been outlawed.
No person is ever forced to join a union. They can always leave. As a shop steward, I had one man try to avoid required union membership. We wished him well as he was leaving. The other hundred or so new employees read the contract and had no problem with membership.
Defore you dis a union, read their contract. You might be amazed at the amount of stuff they guarantee you. There are a few large corporations that have treated engineers and other professionals so poorly thet the professionals called in the blue-collar union and organized.
The Taft Hartley Law and various state RTW laws were designed to deprive unions of income by giving workers the right to choose. The laws failed because employers big and small abused the privilege badly, attempting to pit old versus new, white versus black, men versus women, and any other difference they could exploit to divide and conquer. The surviving employees wised up in a hurry, and organized. Some companies have defeated unions by giving nearly the same benefits without a contract. They are very much aware that any attempt to backtrack will bring in organizers. For you, personally, I suggest you find such a company. You will soon find out how much you are really worth. They usually have probationary periods much longer than the thirty days mandated by Taft-Hartley. My uncle, a small employer, said he could tell in half a day if a new man would be a good worker.
"Right to Work " laws are just a device to give management more leverage against unions. Management has responded by abusing these rights in every state with RTW laws. States without them (California is one) still do not have closed shops, where you must join the union before getting a job. They might have union shops, where new employees must join the union after thirty days' probation. The union has no voice in any employee/employer matter during probation, as spelled out in the Taft-Hartley Law. After probation, the employee has full union rights and privileges, with otherwise equal cases being decided by seniority. It does not take much time in industry to realize that an employee is nothing more than a number, and managers will base all choices on personal preference, given the chance. The manager that does not abuse this privilege is a wonderful person, and should be valued. Employees will find that even in RTW states that forbid union shops, that the promotions and preferences will go to union members. This is because the foremen and managers worked their way up through union ranks, and have little sympathy for clueless freeloaders that want all the benefits and none of the costs or responsibilities. If you as an individual feel that you are too valuable to require union backing, I suggest you form your own company. If you really are that good, the company will prosper even in bad times and you will get rich. As for me, I have worked union and non-union jobs for over forty years. The union jobs were always more secure and more fairly administered. In good companies, the difference was very small, but it always existed.
Scientists discovered a cockroach in the USA that lived on the wire insulation in TV sets. Fortunately, this breed is not very widespread. Unfortunately, if you find a new material, then nature will come up with something that eats and enjoys it.
This thread has good and bad things to say about Mr. Elz, with most of the bad from people who do not want to do it Mr. Elz's way. I see no sympathy for the Australian government, which is friend to nobody but themselves in my not so humble opinion.
I deal with the computer fans every month at user group meetings. They spare no expense on hardware, then search the WWW for free software and music. I prefer their company to that of any of the local immorals. Music people that insist on tubes are my favorite target. They do get less distortion, but only by increasing thermal noise. Do not waste your breath arguing either side of this discussion. My own hearing has a frequency response sloped like Bob Hope's nose. Radio Shack hifi is overkill for me. I do enjoy computing and computer users.
Texas Instruments, one of the companies I retired from, clearly stated their policies on using company computers and telephones even before I started with them in 1974. The computers and telephones were company property, and meant for company business. Anything and everything could and would be monitored. Misuse and abuse would not be tolerated. Having said this, the company was then quite lenient in all but the worst cases. The worst cases involved sexual harrassment, viewing porn (clearly prohibited in several announcements), attempting to misuse or steal trade secrets, or attempting to misappropriate money. The first sin by telephone or computer usually brought a polite request to obey the rules. A second notice was a step toward dismissal. Pay telephones were always available for personal calls, and employees could bring in their personal computers if they wanted, although connecting to the company network put them under company rules. TI did find employees using telephones for personal business, making excessive family calls, some by long distance, and using the company computer for personal gain and sexual pleasure. The only people not given a second chance were some pranksters that let a fake news item go company wide, instead of only to the intended victim. The fake item abused stock exchange regulations, and embarrassed TI. Company policy was clearly stated when an employee was hired, and several reminders and clarifications were published by the company. The company owned the computers and the telephones, and every bit of data on the computers. If this bothered you, you could always leave.
I had a painful wrist from using a mouse. It went away when I changed hands. This was a sore wrist, not carpal tunnel syndrome. I met a young lady in Colorado with the real thing. It was very unpleasant, required special braces, and did not abate while I knew her. Computer users should emulate one characteristic of club runners. They should listen to their bodies and treat pain immediately. If something hurts, the person is doing it incorrectly or excessively, possibly both. Back off, rest, and investigate more comfortable ways to do the same thing.
The strengths were in the characters. William Hartnell, the first Dr. Who, set the protocol ("Don't call me Doc!"). Colin Baker was Tom Baker's enemy before becoming the doctor. Casting a female as Dr. Who is a silly idea. There were female time lords at the trials of Dr. Who, and Romana, ably played by Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward, travelled with Dr. Who, who gave his name on one show as "John Smith". The companions included many capable actors and actresses, but I enjoyed two of the cameos most. Jaqueline Pearce was on briefly in a Patrick Troughton episode, and Lionel Pertwee's companion, Jean Marsh, enjoyed herself hugely as a Valkyrie queen with Sylvester McCoy. The show is British, with a British view, and would be a disaster if it was made in the USA.
My experience and solutions are similar. I have tried three times to use cable TV, and torn it out every time. The cable TV people value their premium channels so much that they protect them with filters that lower their fidelity. Some offset the channel frequencies slightly to require use of their rental tuning boxes. They push pay-per-view to the exclusion of everything else, and I won't watch pay-per-view. I never used satellite or digital cable TV because they still do not offer anything worth my time and money. If I cannot get it on free TV, and it is not worth enduring commercials, then it does not exist. The distributors have already committed suicide in this household.
I remember the mobile phones of the day, and also making telephone calls by marine radio. The calls were not scrambled, and could be monitored by anyone with a proper AM receiver. The charges, ship or automobile, were about $3.25 a minute, when $100 a week was very good wages, and $10K a year was a sign of success.
If you believe that pay phones were removed because they attract criminal types, please send me large amounts of money for future delivery of genuine imitation snake oil. The removal of pay phones is a business decision. In addition to lower use because of cell phones, distrust of people who don't like being monitored, the disabling of received calls to prevent avoidance of pay phone charges, and other things in the comments, there is simple vandalism. An isolated pay phone is a tempting target for a broke vandal, and maintaining these phones is expensive. In many cases, the telephone company will not repair a vandalized pay phone, and they don't care a bit about local need, only their own pocketbook. Telephone company stockholders agree, and if pay phones don't make money, they are history. In the words of Bill Vanderbilt,"The public be damned."
The federal government oversteps their authority frequently. The IRS(Infernal Revenue Service?) has tried it twice with me, once asking questions that went beyond their legal rights to request information, and once trying to extort money from me because they did not think I knew the obscure rule that let me keep my money. With the IRS, admit to math errors and be done with it, but fight to the death if they are wrong about the rules.
As for the fiction of equal justice, they want to confiscate my firearms, which have never hurt anyone, but let Senator Edward Kennedy drive a car after he killed one of his office girls in one. Even the densest newbie should know that the rich get more equality than anyone else.
Protect your rights. Once you cede them, they will not be returned.
I have sent in rebate requests for computer hardware, computer software, and photographic film. The rebates received to date are zero, which means I am out the postage for the requests. The usual reason for refusing a rebate is my not enclosing the original receipt. The original receipt was enclosed, because the rebate offer clearly states that duplicates are not acceptable. The silly request to resubmit the rebate request with the original receipt deserves the one-finger salute.
This comment, like many in the thread, reflects the optimistic views of people that ignore history and do not yet understand how to deal with hard times.
The biggest union movement in the USA started with the great depression in the 1930's. Hiring bosses would go out in the morning and offer a wage to the lined up workers. Those that thought it too low could leave. If there were still too many people, the boss lowered the wage again and again until the work force was the right size for the day. Wages of a dollar a day, and less, were pretty common. Many hiring bosses also expected a kickback if they hired you. A job could and would be yanked at any time during the day, and there was always someone available for replacement. There were no side benefits, and injuries were the worker's problem. Safe practices were expensive, and usually ignored. Sure, being an owner or boss kept you out of this, but becoming either was no picnic. This was the province of people that had the money, and they did not welcome outsiders. They preferred passing openings to family members. Child labor was common, because some families needed every available penny to survive.
The Socialist Party, in the person of their leader, Norman Mattoon Thomas, fought these practices tooth and nail. Mr. Thomas was jailed for speaking about such radical things as a limited work week, retirement insurance for workers, no child labor, and health insurance. This extremely dangerous radical lived long enough to see every plank in his political platform become the law of the land. As an aside, he understood the evils of Russian communism, and fought it vigorously after a short visit to look at slave labor in the Russia of Stalin in 1937.
Per Mr. Thomas, Franklin Delano Roosevelt adopted all the right ideas for all the wrong reasons. The ideas worked, the depression finally broke, and unions had some legal backing. Under Harry Truman, unions were limited by the Taft-Hartley Act. The closed shop is illegal. The union shop is legal in some states. Closed shops require union membership before hiring. Union shops require membership thirty days after hiring. Unions members who do not benefit from their union have only themselves to blame. I have been as high as Shop Steward in a local, and had one of the International representatives relocated when he did not support me during a dispute.
On to the differences between companies and unions. Companies invest money and talent, and operate to make a profit. Employees invest themselves and their skills, and wish to maintain a decent standard of living. The unions organize the employees to prevent the abuses used by employers to maximize profits. This is greatly oversimplified, but basically true. Any union worth its dues will tell employees that the company must make a profit to survive. It is in the employees interest to make this profit, but see to it that it is done within the limits of the law and will allow the individual worker to make a living wage. Both sides are guilty of excess and abuses, that is why negotiations take place. Overclassification of jobs and featherbedding are known union abuses. Divide and conquer is a favorite company tactic. One ploy used by companies is,"I would pay you more, but the union won't let me." Don't listen to this. The union sets minimum wages. Any company can pay an individual more, give bonuses, and give out-of-cycle pay raises. These would cut into profits, and are quite rare. Union benefits are minimal during boom times, and priceless when the going is tough. The one point unions feel they must stand on is seniority. Other things being equal, seniority must rule. Read that sentence. Some people only read the last three words. Companies have found that establishing that things are not equal can be a legal bag of worms, and most do not try. If you are in a union, be active, and you can prosper. If you are not in a union, be very nice to the boss.
Always glad to help out a fellow luser. The older DOS could be stopped with a three-finger salute, pressing the Ctrl-Alt-Delete buttons at the same time. Newer versions from the same company require this operation to be done twice. Microsoft can be saluted with one finger. If all else fails, pull the line cord plug from the wall. This will clear the computer for another try. Really stumped? Follow the lead of Dilbert's PHB and use an Etch-A-Sketch.
The world is not nice, friendly, or safe. You are welcome to avoid facts, but please do not ask for my assistance. I find knowledge an infinitely better shield than ignorance.
The author, Paula Stringer, has degrees from US institutions. I leave comments on whether she is actually educated to /. contributors. Remember, she is protected by various hunting laws that protect humans and other species from indiscriminate slaughter. I disagree with her basic conclusion, but maybe some of the points she raises are valid. The comment that the Linux kernel is not and cannot be held to a fixed schedule might be a sore point with her, but I agree with Linus Torvalds here. It will be released when it is ready, not when some marketoid decides the time is right.
I worked on your island, which is in the North Pacific. Your description is accurate, but incomplete. It describes life on a US military base, doing US Department of Defense contract work almost anywhere. These jobs insulate one from the vagaries of the local environment by isolating the worker from most foreign laws, customs, prices, and religious requirements. The worker must, however, comply with the desires of the local commander. Crossing the local commander will lead to instant termination and sudden liability for taxes and transportation. Stay well groomed, be polite, and do your job. Use discretion in your off-hours activities. These jobs can be financially very rewarding, and will give you an opportunity to learn the local culture. Use this opportunity. The learner might not like anything about the local culture, but it will be the result of experience, not passed on information. I did this in several countries. The culture on US military bases does not vary much. Local cultures differ everywhere. Have fun.
Working for a foreign employer is a another thing. Read other comments for guidance. It can be very good or very bad, and the employee will have to guard his own interests in a different culture, with different laws and customs. If it still looks good, go for it.
Some US employers let employees handle their own taxes overseas, others insist on adjusting pay to leave the employee with the same take home pay as a US employee at the same rate. Avoid the latter type, because their adjusment will never favor the employee. Get the IRS expatriate tax publications before leaving, and study them. Physical presence in a foreign country is easy to prove. Residence in a foreign country is not easy to prove, and, because of special privileges, almost impossible for a Department of Defense contractor to establish. Even one special privilege aborts this means of avoidance.